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From: huebner@aero.aero.org (Robert E. Huebner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: A500 memory expansion
Message-ID: <91430@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
Date: 14 Nov 90 16:06:10 GMT
References: <1990Nov14.004642.9563@ns.network.com>
Sender: news@aerospace.aero.org
Reply-To: huebner@aerospace.aero.org (Robert E. Huebner)
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation
Lines: 33

In article <1990Nov14.004642.9563@ns.network.com>, allen@ns.network.com
(Allen Middleton) writes:
|> I need about 1 meg of fast RAM in addition to my 1 meg chip RAM, and am
|> looking for recommended memory boards.  What about those offered from
|> Free Spirit, Expansion Technologies, or ICD.  Any opinions? 

I have recently been looking into this, so I'll summarize my experiences--

The Expansion System's BaseBoard and the ADRAM system seem about the same: 
remove your A501 in favor of this new board.  A friend using the
baseboard needs
to run a program (cRAM) to configure the memory, but this is because he
wanted to setup as a contiguous block.  Both require adaptors to the Gary
chip.  The majority of dealers and users in this area seem to have chosen
the BaseBoard for one reason or another.  

A new alternative to the A501 replacement is the new SupraRAM 500RX.  I called
Supra and they stated a shipping date in December.  This system is a narrow
case that uses the A500 expansion slot (with pass-through).  Although usually
passthrough is risky, Supra assured me it would work with all of the
harddisk controllers I asked about.  Computability set the 1 Meg price at
arppox. $138 in the latest ads.  It is expandable to 8 Meg.  (Does anyone
know what type of chips it uses?  I forgot to ask... here's hoping for
(cheap) SIMMS)

Also according to dealers (Creative Computers in LA), if you change from
an A501 to a larger trap-door system, you will need to re-configure some
jumpers relating to the ECS Agnus.  I would assume the manuals for the
expansion boards would detail this.
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Robert Huebner		huebner@aerospace.aero.org
			The Aerospace Corporation
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